I know there has been a lot of talk of firewalls, etc lately. Well, this weekend I did a little test of my own. Used Norton Personal Firewall, Norton Internet Security (same thing really), BlackIce, Zone Alarm Pro, Sygate and Tiny Personal Firewall.

I must say, I haven't really used Tiny in several months. The newest version is great IMHO. I mean, the info it gives is great. It used virtually no resources at all on my system. It behaved flawlessly. Granted, it may be a bit more complicated to figure out, but I didn't think so. It is also totally free!! My PC at home sits behind a Netscreen hardware firewall that I have set up with a vengeance, but Tiny is definitely staying on my laptop, which I take to customers, etc. It is really a great piece of software. I would highly recommend you guys check it out, particularly the more savvy users... I am very impressed with it. You all give me your thoughts. Tell me what you like best and why. Oh, and no "BlackIce is crap" or "ZoneAlarm sucks!" posts. I want intelligent, reasonable responses from you all. We can have us a nice little discussion here... so, have at it. . .

OK, you know what I think of Tiny. ZoneAlarm is good. Have used it for a while, both free and pro versions. It is definitely one of the best. Also, ad-blocking is nice, but not necessary really for a firewall. And, it does seem to slow startup at times. It also has a habit of "forgetting" settings. However, I have never had any [b]real[/b] problems with it, and I think it is a great product. BlackIce - has never been a true firewall in my opinion. It has always been more of an IDS (Intrusion Detection System). Basically, if you have a trojan, etc initiating a connection outside from within your system, it would do nothing. It would only look at packets coming in to your system. That has changed. ISS has purchased the prooduct. The BlackIce Defender has been replaced by BlackIce PC Protection. It has tried to incorporate application monitoring, like ZA/Norton/Tiny use. It asks you whenever an application tries to access the network/internet. At first, it seemed to work great. BUT... I found several apps that would lock up when BlackIce asked if they should be given access. Yahoo Messenger (which my wife uses) is one. I tried it on 3 machines. Same thing. Locked it up tight. Also had an ftp client on 2 different machines do it as well, and a few others. If they get this issue resolved, I thing BlackIce could be a contender. Norton Internet Security/Personal Firewall is decent. It has gotten a lot of good reviews lately. Has ad-blocking, application monitoring like the rest. I have no problem with it... It performed just as well as Zone Alarm, except it used nearly twice the memory. Thanks, but no thanks. I like all the free memory I can get!!! I think I will definitely be using Tiny for now. Small footprint, detailed information, great protection. Just my opinion. BTW, I also tested each app with [b]basic[/b] attacks using NetscanTools and NMAP to probe ports, syn/ack, and a few others. All the firewalls caught them, which I guess is the most important fact for any firewall. Hopefully I will have the time this week to mount some more"formidable" attack tests on all these products. I want to see if there are any holes or issues to be exposed in them, as my tests this weekend were very limited to say the least.

I used Tiny Personal Firewall for a few weeks but I was using Zone Alarm Pro at the same time and using 2 firewalls at once isn't really a very good idea... So I got rid of Tiny and I've had ZAPro since.

Might give it a go again anyway as you say it's so good

For those of you interested, the Tiny Personal Firewall download page...
***********.tinysoftware.com/home/tiny?s=9107547958550099285A0&la=EN&va=aa&pg=downlo ad

By the way, I use Norton AntiVirus 2002, Zone Alarm Pro 3, The Cleaner 3 aswell as Ad-aware 5.

My setup was exactly yours, except I now use Tiny. One issue a friend had with Zone Alarm pertains to it's "New Network Found" function. He was flashing his Linksys and when the new flash began to be written, ZA detected it as a new network and killed the connection, which was being used to complete the flashing. he had disabled ZA, but not the service apparently. Anyways, it killed the flash process and he had to return the Linksys. I am not sure I like it automatically killing the abililty to participate in a network before any traffic even tries to enter the machine. Although, he should have disabled the service though... Like I said, I really do like ZA, I have just been really impressed with Tiny. Perhaps merely because it is something new to use and I bore easily!